Verbing the Noun

Language has become an interesting symbolic representation of living. Each time we look around with our words, we are unaware of how much these symbols reduce life to assumptions. Words allow us to dismiss the art of living, transforming discovery into what we already know.

Words are at the root of how consciousness develops. By transforming them into a different meaning, we can loosen our assumptions in the same way our dreams achieve this while we sleep.

We already Verb the Noun by saying things like elbow our way, or head into certain scenarios. However, other ways of using linguistic liberty allows us to create hybrids of words to uproot self-defeating assumptions.

The ideas behind the words make life predictable, and impede our ability to see beyond what we know.

Dreaming the Painting

A tree…a lemon...a bird…a black cloud on the northern horizon. What word would capture the essence of all that is happening in that moment? Symphony. One aspect gives color and dimension, and beckons transformation in another.

Like a living and breathing painting, the tree comes alive and sways with the impending change in temperature we call wind. The lemons stand out as the sky darkens. They appear heavier over time, and we use the word: ripe.

The bird stops and smiles as if it knows we finally can see this moment in time. And now, the trees are clapping at our arrival because we had to be here to witness it all.

A lot of my work is intuitive, and I find myself reaching for the perfect parable or complex metaphor that embodies what I am sensing from the images I receive.

Working with dreams for so many decades has allowed me to understand how the mind creates this type of hybrid and multi-dimensional painting while we sleep.

Unusual Pairings

A dream symbol is often unusual in that it is either a hybrid of unusual pairings, or surrounded by other imagery that describes what is happening inside of the dreamer. That is why dreams are bizarre. Until we come to realize this – we have difficulty understanding their message.

Whether driving the car or feeling the earth, we are accustomed to verbing (driving/feeling) the noun (car/earth). But Verbing the Noun can also combine ideas so that driving the car might be called touring: how we move through life.

Anything happening with a transportation symbol in a dream relates to what motivates or drives us forward.

We can also Noun the Verb. Feeling the earth means to actually participate with all of it, like the trees and rocks that we consider inanimate. What did you do today? Oh, I was earthing.

Earthing is more than a feeling. We override the mundane to see something more meaningful unfolding. The lemons grow heavy on the branch because gravity has begun to pick them when they refuse to fall.

Everything is orchestrated perfectly that way. We can go earthing everyday, just like brushing our teeth.

Dreaming Beyond the Obvious

To understand dreams, we need to look beyond the obvious. What is unusual about the symbol? The dream is like a living story, captured in a snapshot…a symphony of symbols that blend together. Each gives added meaning to the other.

Understanding our dreams allows us to take this creativity back to transform our experiences. A hybrid word like reducting can combine the idea of reducing with conducting: giving up control. When we spend the day reducting, earthing allows us to see the symphony that is beyond our control.

The concept of motionalizing suggests a type of careful movement that is different than what we did before. Motionalizing with what? The moment, and yes, the idea that life is circular.

If you spend the day reducting and motionalizing, you may even discover a deeper dimension to your emotions.

We can move toward freestriction and loosen our innerecologizer. The genius of the dreaming mind is how it reworks a jaded and crusty outlook into something more supple and alive.

Freud called this hybrid process Condensation. What I see is the key to our innate creativity. It is how we can learn from our dreams to arrive at wonder in a lasting way.

When I am working with a dream, I see it like the unheard psyche of the client describing its condition. Like gravity and the lemons, nature has designed a way to release even the hardest outlook through dreaming. Self-defeating ideas fall away, and we are made more supple and open.

Everything is orchestrated perfectly that way. We need only let go.

Living the Healing

I compare dreams to poetry. In the same way a poet will orchestrate a feeling response in the reader without being literal, a dream achieves this same inner movement in the dreamer.

Linguistic fluidity and metaphors allow us to identify everyday classifications through the use of words and make use of hybrids. The process can be comical…it can be insightful…and just like dreams, it can change what we think we think.

Imagine dreaming of going to a doctor. “What do you need?” he asks. You tell him you have difficulty sleeping. He hands you a bottle of NotsoAbominable with a snow monster on the label.

“What is that?” you ask. “It will help eliminate fear,” he says.

Everything is a reflection of your inner world in a dream. Your inner tapestry has grown arctic and frigid because you are hiding, not living. The root cause is actually a childish idea you’ve carried into adulthood. You’ve become the Abominable Snowmonster that you fear.

This is what dreams do. The pill bottle seems like a crazy symbol to be dismissed, but worry is affecting your sleep. It brings the cause and cure together in a Shadow encounter. Letting it out of the bottle allows you to face your own repressed power to grow warmer and thrive.

The hospital transforms into an airport and now, you have lost your luggage! The entire airport staff knows that you don’t need to be carrying so much baggage from the past. They want you to fly too. Like the lemons, you’ve grown heavy in time.

The eburflous magnanitude can only flow through you when you let go. It grows magnanimous because your attitude is one of acceptance. It is a natural ebbing and flowing of goodness and depth that replaces the superfluous.

Consciousness develops from words and our dreams find unusual ways of tricking the psyche into profound healing. Dreams change the ideas we take for granted by combining unusual pairings as a type of linguistic fluidity. They jumble outworn concepts that trap us in the past.

And they teach us: don’t take life at face value. Dreaming is nature’s evolutionary mechanism of renewal.

Life is tons more fun when you participate in its curiosity and enjoy the ride.